A Shield's Memoirs
Memoirs written in 1428 from a guardsmen and later Lord Commander of the prominent city of Kingston would emerge, thought to be lost with the flooding of Anthos but rediscovered having been saved by scholars within the Empire. David Campos, a Shield of Salvus wrote of his life in the Kingdom of Salvus prior to its partition in 1425 and the major events of the era from his eyes including the Invasion of Malinor, the Orenian Civil War culminating with the Dreadfort Siege, the Orenian-Urguan War, and the Inquisition's Ordos Scrutinati in Kingston as well as the massacring of the city's guardsmen and civilians before the Great Exodus. He also empathized the struggles the Kingdom faced including pressure from notable factions and military orders such as the White Rose and the Flays/Blackmonts, corruption and incompetence within the ranks of the Shields both from the low ranks and the higher ranks, as well as the internal struggles of the Kingdom's leadership primarily revolving around the Hightowers' scandals and the incompetence of the Bedeveres whose leadership would accelerate the collapse of the Kingdom of Salvus to the orcish warring nation.
WESTWARDE CITADEL, SALVUS, 1428
When I first came to Salvus, the beleaguered nation I would soon call home, I was still a youth. At that time, its immediate ruler was King James II of the Hightowers. Today, the name Hightower still carries a controversial reputation, much as it did then. Nevertheless, at the time the family was at the height of its glory, presiding over the most populous and by my account, most beautiful city in Anthos.
Salvus itself had a reputation in those days too: the most dangerous city on the continent. And not because it sat at the crossroads of all four nations–foreign incursions would be folly, as humanity was united under the first, or “Holy” Oren Empire, then ruled by the ruthless Emperor Horen V. No, Salvus was a hive of thieves, bandits, and other criminals. There was internal unrest within the empire as well; the savage Flays and the far more powerful White Rose lived to the north, and they both held the Hightowers in great disdain. This meant that the capital city of Kingston was subjected constantly to bandit raids from all sides, along with a host of undesirables within the walls themselves. Under constant siege, the royal guard force, the Shields, had long since buckled under pressure and were at the time often unable to fulfill their duties.
I heard all this as I wandered the streets of Kingston, but perhaps by fate, the first time I saw the Shields was not in an all-too-common moment of ignominious defeat, but in a small victory, as they rounded up and slew a petty thief. As military action went, it was about as simple as I can imagine, but it was more than I had ever seen and thus enough to get my attention. So, naturally, I asked to join. From there, I was taken to the keep, which was as beautiful as the city itself. Architects took a more grandiose approach in those days…
I mention my initiation only because it was there that I met my friend and mentor, Zandros Waveswept. It was customary for one of the Shields to “welcome” each recruit by fighting them on a sand pit outside the palace, a fight which they usually won. For me, Zandros was the opponent. A thinnish man with a gleam of intelligence in his eyes, he had been recruited a mere six months before me and was already rising quickly in the ranks. The Lord Commander saw in him a protege, as did both lower commanders, and he seemed eager to gain favor with both them and the local nobles. It saddens me to say that his story does not end well. But if I have grown to be an able commander, it is because of his influence.
For the next few years, few things changed. Kingston remained its usual crime-ridden self, and we did what we could to fight it. I learned to swing a sword, to fire a bow, to obey orders and to march in formation. The Lord Commander, Thomas Siegemen, was a fanatic about formations–he admired the primary military of Oren, the White Rose, and wished to emulate them as much as he could. But he was a serious, brutish man, fond of beating both his own men and the odd passersby on the street. He inspired no loyalty or love, and the entirety of the city hated him, with the exception of perhaps Zandros. It was always difficult to tell what he actually thought of people. In any case, for all his faults, the old man wouldn’t accept weakness. His men were resilient, and they steadfastly continued on in the face of more adversity than any other military force that I know of.
In the year 1408, Emperor Horen tired of sitting idle, and declared war on the neighboring elves to the west. We were told to expect battle, but it never came. So strong was the empire then that the elves surrendered without a fight. The majority of their land was annexed, and the dominion of humanity spread across the north of the continent, meeting no resistance. We gained recruits from the war propaganda and lost nobody. And it was a good thing, for a real war was coming, a bloody one.
In 1410, after hearing of a series of grievances and mounting tensions between the Teutonic Order and the Flays, (Then known as Blackmonts) the Emperor granted his permission to both vassals for blood to be spilt over the conflict. The resulting civil war enveloped the empire in strife for over two years, and involved almost every faction in the north of the continent. It was during this war that Salvus mustered the most troops in its history. The Hightowers, hoping that a victory would destroy the Blackmonts and thus restore peace to their kingdom, threw us squarely in the Teutonic camp, and through our efforts we were able to raise over 40,000 men.
The campaign raged across both the frozen hills of the north and the fertile plains of home. The Flays, who outnumbered the Teutonic order but were less disciplined, found themselves crushed in open combat, but struck viciously in raids against anyone who backed the northerners. In time, the enemy was driven to defend their towering fortress the Dreadfort.
I doubt any man who was there and still lives does not still remember it. 200,000 men stood that day on that bleak field, before a massive castle so large that it was able to hold an almost equal number of the enemy. It took days of siege with all the Teutonic firepower to even begin to bring it down. And in the end, we were driven back, though leaving the Dreadfort a pile of smoldering rubble.
That was the end of the civil war. With the remains of the Blackmonts on the offensive, backed by their White Rose allies, the Emperor intervened, and for reasons still unknown to me today, the Teutonic order was temporarily disbanded. In the course of all this, Zandros had managed to maneuver his way into a commander rank, displacing one Vectis Vekon. With the second commander of the Shields often away, this effectively made him second in the chain of command. As I remember, he mostly used the newfound power for wenching. He was generally considered an authority among us anyway.
It was also the end of Salvus as I had known it. In the Imperial capital of Abresi, events were already in motion that would put our very existence in jeopardy. The unlimited power of the Horens had kept us safe, but it could also destroy us at will. After the battle of the Dreadfort, we returned to our home, and we did what we had always did: persevered. But the Emperor and his advisors had grown intolerant of the Hightowers’ arrogance, of the crime rife within Kingston, and of Salvus’ monopoly of the central trade routes running through it. And so Ordos Scrutinati was ordered, and all hell broke loose.
Ordos Scrutinati was the Imperial Inquisition’s term for a mass investigation. It had been decided that Kingston was to be purified. Where before we had dealt with small raiding bands of Blackmonts and bandits, now we faced the professional might of the White Rose, backed by an imperial edict and working with the Inquisition, which was in those days truly terrifying. It might not have been so bad for us in particular, if we had not just fought a war against the White Rose. But on the day they were handed control of the city, they immediately exacted a gruesome revenge. From the very minute the gates closed, the streets ran red with Shield blood. Only a few of us survived: myself, Commander Waveswept, and some of the recruits escaped into the mountains. The Lord Commander was thought dead for days, and it was difficult to regroup, as we had to stay off the main roads. Eventually, we reached the capital with news of the massacre, and it was only because the Roses acted on their own that we were allowed back into our own city.
When the battered remains of the Shields returned to their city, it was a much different place. As the crossroads between nations, Kingston had always taken its vitality from the extreme diversity within its walls. But from the moment the inquisition set its banners on the palace walls, elves and halfbreeds were captured and slaughtered along with any that the empire deemed “heretic.” But the city persevered, until the day the White Rose made one fatal mistake, and slew a Dwarven lord within the walls of Kingston.
The transgression came at the end of a string of conflicts between the empire and the Dwarven kingdom of Urguan, and the high king Thorin Grandaxe, facing internal resistance to his rule, could not allow himself to appear weak. War was declared, breaking a peace agreement that had existed between humans and dwarves for decades.
Ordos Scrutinati was abandoned, but Salvus’ troubles were just beginning, and not because of the dwarves: Oren won the first armed clashes handily and was pressing into their territory within a few months. The ultimate decline of our beautiful homeland came from the machinations of our own treacherous Lord Steward: Aron Bedevere. A farmer of Adunian ancestry who had clawed his way to nobility, he was by this time very wealthy, but was known mostly for his lust. The trail of bastards that Bedevere left in his wake was perhaps the largest I have ever seen. But for whatever reason, he was at the time well liked among us, particularly by the commanders. Siegemen had long ago found him worthy of loyalty, and Waveswept had apparently sensed where power really laid in the kingdom.
In any case, Bedevere ordered a full evacuation of what was still the most populous city in the world, citing the Dwarven threat as justification. The gates were closed to traffand with no populace, the Hightowers’ power base shriveled to practically nothing. I later found out that the steward had carried out the edict in return for a seat on the imperial council. If only we had known at the time…
Not a month later, the Great Exodus shook the empire to its core. The details of the event are of little concern to me, and many today still struggle to understand the causes. But some half of the imperial leadership set sail across the horizon, taking with them the majority of Oren’s military. Seizing the opportunity, Bedevere used his influence with the then-king Garth Hightower, who defected to Urguan and immediately abdicated his title to Aron, beginning the Bedevere dynasty, the weakest and most mismanaged period in Salvian history.
Over the next few years, as the rest of Oren fell to the Dwarves, Salvus only further declined. King Aron refused to open the city gates, and despite the complaints of his commanders, Siegemen refused to contest the decision. Instead, we turned our attention to ourselves. We constructed Westwarde Citadel, a massive fortress which, although undeniably impressive, became too large to effectively defend in later years when our numbers dwindled. As Siegemen’s health waned, Zandros pressed his own influence, reforming the Shields into the Legion of the Cardinal Cross. And so as the kingdom itself grew weaker, we grew stronger.
It would never be enough. Although Zandros soon took control of the military after the death of Siegemen, the throne was still entrusted to the Bedeveres, who continually made the wrong decisions for their own self interest. Upon the death of the Grand King, they became paranoid, believing that the dwarves could no longer protect them from outside invaders. Their concerns were partially warranted: few who manned the citadel trusted their new ruler Dizzy Irongrinder, the “delver king.” But there was little choice but to put our trust in our liege, something that the Bedeveres never understood.
The issue came to a height upon the unification of the orc clans into a single horde, which subsequently moved to invade Salvus from the west. Mercifully, King Aron had been recently assassinated by bandits, but he left behind the boy king Relenkai Bedevere, who by virtue of inexperience was just as bad. Perhaps, had we acted then to oust the dynasty, we could have averted disaster, but Zandros, despite his reservations, still felt loyalty to the boy’s father. It was a loyalty that would cost him his life.
Yet he was able to do some good: while we held the orcs at bay, Zandros was able to influence Relenkai and his advisors to reopen the city, and even as the invaders grew closer, Kingston became all that it had once been: a thriving center of commerce and culture. The mood was optimistic, as the dwarves were now fully mobilized, with a large army on the way to aid us. One of our commanders, Tahjeet Mubdee, had been sent to the elven realm of Malinor to gather further allies, and fortifications were being set heavily in place around Kingston. If all went well, it seemed victory was at hand.
It seemed that way at least, until the very day before the horde arrived at our gates. The Bedevere’s mistrust of Urguan had come to a boil, and without consulting with his advisors or with the legion, he renounced his loyalty to the dwarves and declared alliance with the fractured northern kingdoms that once had comprised Oren. There was no time to act; by the time the news reached us, the orcs were already upon us, and with them the incensed, fully armed Dwarven Legion. No help came from the elves, as the promises we had made them could no longer be trusted. No help came from Relenkai’s precious north either: He had not realized that their populace still detested Salvus, and many of them fought for the other side.
I still remember Zandros’ roars of anger upon hearing of how Relenkai had destroyed everything he’s worked for. Many did not survive the battle the next day, as the horde broke through our walls meeting almost no resistance. The Lord Commander was among them. Kingston was lost, the bridge between Westwarde Citadel and the city was demolished as per my orders. I alone was forced to protect what remained of our forces and lands as the next in line for Lord Commander, as all those who proclaimed themselves as our allies had abandoned us. The Bedevere's had fled into the fractured Kingdoms of Oren having betrayed Urguan's trust and the elves from Malinor had never come. Our city, its citizens, and our history had truly come to a tragic end. Perhaps I should have fallen in the siege with Waveswept, for I have been left with a burden worse than death itself.
SIGNED,
LORD COMMANDER DAVID CAMPOS, 1428
Aftermath
Serving as the last Lord Commander of Salvian Forces after the partition of Kingston. David Campos according to records would later serve as the representative for the remaining Salvian territories in return for providing military aid to Emperor Siegmund I. After reformation in the realm of humanity he'd become a prominent military officer in the Imperial Army under the newly formed Third Empire ruled by the Peter Chivay. While his disdain written in his memoirs leads to confusion on his willingness to serve the blood of a White Rose who openly slaughtered many of his own, it is referenced in the witnessed accounts of the Vibian Coup in 1467 that the elderly Salvian stood beside Lord Vibius de Sola, Imperial Marshal of Oren in the ousting of House Chivay from the Orenian capital in Athera and their removal from power and is considered one of the few Imperial Officers to have done as so.
